The performance of a pulsed CO2laser using the capacitor transfer circuit is generally known to improve with an optimum peaking‐to‐storage capacitor ratioCp/Cswhich varies from around 0.1 to almost 0.5. There has been no reported attempt to account for precisely the origin of this optimum ratio and the large difference amongst them with different experimental setups. In this paper, the optimum capacitor ratio is shown to depend uniquely on the distributed circuit inductances. This may be understood from a simple consideration of the impedance matching for achieving an optimum power transfer at a quasiconstantE/Nratio into the main discharge.